bluer then the new houston skies
by FallingNarwhals
Summary: Looking back on it, it was extremely expected of the Blue Lion to choose the ruins of Pangrea to hide.


Looking back on it, it was extremely expected of the Blue Lion to choose the ruins of Pangrea to hide.

Pangrea used to be called Las Vegas, before the Martian wars left a lot of Old America a barren desert with old cities buried in the dust. Las Vegas was supposedly a wonderland for the rich, with bright neon lights and amazing performances. Once Keith found a archive of videos dating back to the 2100's on the deep web, and was in awe of what the ruins he stood in used to be.

Sometimes he found poker chips in the sand and would pocket them, liking the satisfying sound of the ancient plastic clicking together in his pockets. The cave systems ran underneath the city, sometimes sporting evidence that they've been discovered with ancient graffiti and plastic trash that still hadn't disintegrated after five hundred years.

Humanity was amazing. Create life on a dead planet, the life rises up and kills the hand that fed it. But somehow, humanity's mistakes, like the ancient plastics, survived.

Shiro's rocket to Kerberos launched on Mars, and Keith enjoyed his stay on the former red planet. The sky was bluer and cleaner than Earth's due to the eco-friendly laws that were in place since the foundation of New Houston was put down. Dark brown rivers of muddy and nutrient rich water ran from the heart of the planet to the generators of New Houston, the odd one-earth fish that had evolved the second they touched martian water.

(those rivers were nothing like the sickly rivers of earth, some so toxic that they said monsters lurked within)

Everything had a purpose in New Houston. All trash was recycled. Leftovers were saved. No chemicals were allowed to poison the rich soil without dire legal consequences that included getting your fingers chopped off.

Keith would had stayed in New Houston if the garrison wasn't pulling him back to Earth like opposite ends of a magnet. His teammates at the garrison for simulations were nice enough, pushing the well-used simulation to it's limits, soaring in the artificial skies. The navigator was Martian, and they would talk excitedly about the sites and the cultures. He talked with interesting Martian slang and it took him ages to unlearn the Martian gravity. He could barely climb stairs, had to hold onto the railing like it was a lifeline.

It had to do with perceiving one's weight or something. The Martian thought he was lighter than what he was on Earth, and therefore he felt as though he was being weighed down.

"Think that you carry you textbooks on you shoulders and you head, except you cannot take them off and it fucking hurts," he told Keith in broken Russian. Then, in perfect English. "It feels like my shoes are glued to the floor. I can't jump."

The Galaxy Garrison insisted that the lessons were taught in Russian, but everyone spoke their own languages in the dorms or at meals. Keith liked the way everyone developed a blend of Russian and English and Spanish that would be used interchangeably, the blend of languages soothing to his Korean-born ears.

Russian accents with broken spanish slang in English conversations was the majority, that's why Lance with his cuban accent and perfect English seemed to stick out. Not many of the Garrison students were Cuban (or Korean, come to think of it) but they didn't dismiss him for it. It was just an interesting fact you could say on the first day of school, along with what you did during the summer break and how many siblings you had.

(Keith had one. Keith had Shiro, who crashed a million dollar rocket into Pluto's icy moon.)

Pangrea had a lot of huge glass pieces hidden in the sand, and it took a while for Keith to figure out what they were. Superheated sand melted and became clear, making huge flats of glass, some forty feet in diameter, filled with small holes ants and small lizards had dug their way through.

They were the result of bombs. The word was foreign in Keith's mouth, and he ran his tongue over and over the strange English word until it rolled off his tongue like turpentine.

They say before the nations united, everyone was always in wars. Countries hated each other for the stupidest of reasons, like the darkness of one's skin or whatever god someone believed in. Then when America and Russia and several of the bigger nations colonized Mars, the world united to keep Mars theirs once the riots started happening.

That failed, but the peace treaty was still in place. Now the common enemy was the unknown, and people threw themselves into space instead of war.

It was hard for Keith to imagine.

Looking back, when Keith admired Lance's reckless but i gracefuli/ piloting, it was extremely characteristic for the ruins of Pangrea for Blue to hide, waiting patiently for her paladin.

Lance was flashy, like the grainy holo-vids of Las Vegas Keith had seen. Lance had eyes bluer than the Pangrea sky, eyes so deep Keith felt like his boots were melting into the floor when he gazed into them. Lance was beautiful, like those melted patches of sand that dotted the desert in a beautiful pattern.

Lance had lips that were softer than the water-smoothed sand, had hands that would set Keith's hand aflame, and damn him if Keith didn't love every part of him, every rough patch and smooth curves and battering of a heartbeat.

He was larger than life, larger than any sickly life on earth, larger than the multicolored nebulas they flee through daily, he was just so i Lancei/ that he could hardly take it sometimes.

When Keith buried his nose into Lance's soft skin, he smelled faintly off the sagebrush that grew in Pangrea in thick, sweet-smelling clumps. Each finger brushing the curves and dips of Lance's skin was his speeder racing across the desert, fingers knotting in his too-long hair was the dry toxic wind ripping through it, each moan he drew out of Lance was beautiful, music to his ears.

Their bodies moved together like clockwork, hands wandering, soft lips and sharp teeth that felt painfully good, toes curled, legs tangled together, hearts beating as one, breaths coming in fast pants that flushed their cheeks and almost overwhelmed Keith's oversensitive brain. He felt every jerk of Lance's body beneath him, every finger leave a trail of burning skin in its wake, every small divot in Lance's lean muscles, every Spanish curse the Castle translator could never seem to translate.

Lance couldn't just have two hands. There were hands everywhere, tangled in his hair and resting on his hips and pulling his upper back forward. His body was a liquid, comforting to Keith's body and so fluid and graceful and perfect.

Lance was an angel, and there was no other way to describe it. He was an angel in a boy's body, a string of sweet nothings in his mouth and his soft skin and his lean body..

And together, they intertwined. Calloused fingers trace tan skin, tangle in short hair. Soft hands gripped his hips lightly for support, pressing their bodies closer, and oh god-

Lance was beautiful.


End file.
